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Fewer Japanese workers want to enter the country's food service industry because of the long hours, repetitive tasks and insufficient holidays, according to an entrepreneur.
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Tetsuya Sawanobori is president at Connected Robotics, a start-up that plans to sell a robot in that can help restaurants prepare a popular Japanese street food called Takoyaki.
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Connected Robotics is one of many companies in Japan using technology to address the country's labor shortages due to a shrinking population.
When Tetsuya Sawanobori finished grad school about a decade ago, he decided to start his own business. He set up a restaurant in Japan , following in the footsteps of his grandparents and uncle.
A year later, he stopped.
"I realized it's very hard," Sawanobori told CNBC. With few holidays, and working on average 16 hours a day, he said he was "exhausted, and that's why I gave it up."
"Right now, especially in the food service industry, they have a serious lack of labor because people tend to avoid these kinds of jobs, doing daily, repetitive" tasks, he said. "It's very hard and overwhelming for people ... they usually work very long, like 12 hours, or some people work 15 hours a day."
He explained that the situation is becoming more severe as Japan's population continues to shrink, putting more pressure on active workers.
Long office hours, often seen as a measure of hard work, have become a cultural norm in post-war Japan, where decades of economic growth led to the country's emergence as the world's third-largest economy. Starting in the 1990s, that growth slowed — but the long hours remained. The problem of "overwork" is serious enough that Japan's business community and the government are working to address the issue.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for the government to examine plans to hire more skilled foreigners ; meanwhile, many industries are turning to robots as a way around the labor shortfall.
Rise of the robots
After ending his venture in the restaurant business, Sawanobori moved into robotics.
He's now president at Connected Robotics, a start-up that is backed by the Japanese arm of early-stage venture firm 500 Startups.
The company plans to sell a robot this summer that, according to Sawanobori, can help restaurants prepare a popular street food called Takoyaki — batter balls filled with minced octopus. He explained that the robot can put the ingredients together on the hot grill pan and tend to balls as they're being cooked.
While the robot doesn't make the cooking process faster, Sawanobori said that it makes it less tiring for the kitchen staff, since they do not have to constantly stand in front of the hot grill. He has plans to design the robots to assist restaurants with cooking or preparing other kinds of Japanese dishes and also help with washing dirty dishes.